world. Yet the poet continues to praisein the face of this: “That the lightningstruck the willow / and did not fall— forthis I am grateful.”Wunderlich says in a recent interviewthat, as an agnostic, he initially felt em-barrassed “writing a book that was reli-gious, addressed to a god I don’t believein.” Perhaps Wunderlich’s doubt is ex-actly what gives these poems their nec-essary tension; the wonder and longingin their tone, and the unsettledness andawe with which the poems end is earned,not a foregone conclusion. At a timewhen many poets write about the impos-sibility of meaning and the uselessnessof language, The Earth Avails is a refresh-ing read. It is a book to carry with you.

— Katrina Vandenberg

American Catch

BY PAUL GREENBERG

Penguin Press, 2014. $26.95, 306 pages.

MOST RECEnT WRITIng on the state of
our oceans suggests that we’re eating too
much seafood, that overfishing strains fish
populations and contributes
to their impending collapse.

But in his superb new book,
American Catch: The Fight
for Our Local Seafood, Paul
Greenberg o=ers a novel idea:
we, or at least we Americans,
are eating too little seafood,
and our fish-averse ways are
contributing to ecological
degradation—not just in the
oceans but also on land, particularly in population-dense regions like
New York City and the Gulf Coast.

Greenberg’s argument is powerful and
elegant. By spurning native seafood—we
eat just fifteen pounds of seafood per capita
annually, 91 percent of which is imported—we have little incentive to maintain
our coastal ecosystems. And it’s these ecosystems’ wetlands and marshes that buffer land from hurricanes and storm-roiled
waves. Through restoring and maintaining
coastal habitats, and by relying on them
much more heavily for sustenance, Greenberg argues that we can improve our diets
and ready our densely populated shorelines
for the coming e=ects of climate change.

To make his case, Greenberg exam-ines three seascapes in various states ofdisrepair: the greater New York City area,a once-abundant delta ruined by humanintervention; the Mississippi Delta, stillrobust but reeling; and Alaska, nearlypristine but under constant threat fromthe mining and oil industries.

A native of Long Island, Greenberg’s re-porting from New York is especially good.As recently as a century ago, tidal bedsaround the city produced more than a bil-lion oysters per year—they were a cheapand tasty protein source for millions ofpeople. Greenberg says that Lower Manhat-tan’s teeming saloons once o=ered “all thelocal oysters you could eat for a sixpence.”They also provided other important ser-vices. “Oysters and marsh grasses stabilizethe shoreline and create protective pocketsof water,” Greenberg ex-plains, which are “essentialfor the sensitive lives of juve-nile fish.” These “biologicalarrangements,” as he puts it,are known as salt marshes,and “three quarters of allthe commercial fish specieswe eat rely on salt marshesfor all or part of their lifecycles.” On a per-acre basis,they generate more nutri-tious calories and sequester more carbonthan any other ecosystem in the world—and they can absorb huge amounts of tidalstorm surge.

Today, New York City’s salt marshes
exist mostly in memory. Nationwide, the
U.S. has lost up to 70 percent of them—
most have disappeared in the last fifty
years — leaving places like the eastern seaboard and Gulf Coast vulnerable to the effects of climate change.

American Catch shows what we’ve sacrificed by mistreating our coasts and how
it’s hard and expensive to revive near-dead ecosystems. But rebuilding habitat — recreating the conditions for oysters,
salmon, and shrimp to survive and act as
natural water filters, marsh builders, and
local food sources—is quite doable, says
Greenberg, and would likely involve a
“conjoining of the interests of seafood and
the interests of humans.”

— Tom Philpott

Purchase your copy atwww.orionmagazine.org/books.

To Eat
with Grace

A selection of writing about
food from Orion magazine
Featuring work from Barbara
Kingsolver, Gary Paul Nabhan,
Maxine Kumin, and others,
this short volume makes a
perfect holiday gift for anyone
who loves to eat.